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Republicans’ Latest Threat to an Iran Deal

By Carol Giacomo March 9, 2015 5:04 pmMarch 9, 2015 5:04 pm

By now it should be obvious that a vocal segment of Congress is determined to do whatever it can to undermine President Obama’s attempts to negotiate an agreement that would restrict Iran’s nuclear program. House Republicans invited Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to denounce the pact in a speech to Congress, and a bipartisan group of senators is pushing legislation that could set new conditions on a deal and force a congressional vote.

Now comes the latest salvo, an open letter to the leaders of Iran organized by Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas — a freshman with no foreign policy credentials — and signed by 46 of his Republican Senate colleagues, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The highly unusual letter, first reported by Bloomberg View, is an irresponsible attempt to interfere with the negotiations — which are now at a delicate phase — and scare the Iranians off making any deal with Mr. Obama.

The senators are not even waiting to see the actual details of what might be agreed by Iran and the major powers — the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany — before trying to shoot it down.

In the letter, the senators warn that “we will consider any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by the Congress as nothing more than an executive agreement” between President Obama and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader.

They also assert — with considerable chutzpah and a sense of entitlement — that while Mr. Obama will leave office in January 2017, senators can serve an unlimited number of six-year terms so “most of us will remain in office well beyond then – perhaps decades.” (They seem to dismiss the not insignificant factor of voters who may make a different decision about the length of their incumbency.)

“The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of an agreement at any time,” the letter added.

While senators have often written letters to American presidents or approved resolutions to express their views on important matters, it is unusual for Congress to write directly to foreign leaders, Donald Ritchie, the Senate historian, told me. In the rare past cases when Congress did communicate directly with foreign leaders, it has usually been in support of an administration position, such as in 1978 when 55 senators wrote to ask Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev to intervene in the case of two American correspondents, including Craig Whitney of The Times, who were charged by the Soviets with slander.

The letter also raises questions about the form of whatever agreement may emerge and whether Congress must approve it. The administration says the deal would not be a treaty, requiring Senate ratification, but a political agreement not requiring congressional action. We argued in this editorial that there is a constructive way for Congress to weigh in.

But the senators’ suggestion that international political commitments made by presidents can and should be easily overturned — and therefore by implication have no value — is at odds with tradition, American security interests and good sense. Every president has negotiated scores of agreements with foreign governments that have not required congressional approval and sometimes, not even congressional review. These include last year’s security agreement with Afghanistan, the 1987 Missile Technology Control Regime which aims to limit the spread of ballistic missiles and — oh yes — the 2013 interim agreement with Iran that has already substantially curbed the country’s ability to make nuclear fuel.

Iran’s chief negotiator, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, dismissed the letter as “propaganda,” but it undoubtedly has handed the hardliners in Iran another argument to use in opposing an agreement.